Please note the changed opening hours from 16 April 2024. More

Magical Soup
Media Art from the Nationalgalerie Collection, the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection im Hamburger Bahnhof and Loans

06.09.2020 to 18.04.2021
Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart

Spaciously presented across more than 2,000 square metres in Hamburger Bahnhof’s Rieckhallen, the group exhibition Magical Soup features key works complemented by loans representing the latest generation of artists, with a common point of departure being the nexus of sound, image and social space.

Music has the power to create imaginary worlds. Sounds can physically shake up rooms. And images can conjure up auditory spaces that draw us beyond canvases and screens. Magical Soup explores the power and the magic with which images, sound, music, and language create, reveal or hide reality. The works range between precise observation, radical self-expression, and deliberate deconstruction of identity.

A Spectacle of Media Art

The Nationalgalerie has one of the most extensive museum collections of media art in Europe. Its holdings of important historical video art have been supplemented over the last few years by exceptional time-based works of recent origin. Magical Soup brings together works by the media art pioneers Nam June Paik, Jochen Gerz, Charlemagne Palestine, Ulrike Rosenbach and Keiichi Tanaami; by the multimedia artists Nevin Aladağ, Stan Douglas, Cyprien Gaillard, Douglas Gordon, Rodney Graham, Dmitry Gutov, Anne Imhof, Joan La Barbara, Pipilotti Rist, Diana Thater, Lawrence Weiner, Nicole Wermers and David Zink Yi; and by the younger artists Korakrit Arunanondchai, Trisha Baga, Dineo Seshee Bopape, Christine Sun Kim, Sandra Mujinga and Sung Tieu.

The exhibition is accompanied by a publication with texts by Anna-Catharina Gebbers, Chloe Stead and Jessica Lauren Elizabeth Taylor. Among the online offers, a series of video contributions with artist’s talks and exhibition films about Magical Soup has been produced to accompany the exhibition.

Allein im Museum | "Magical Soup" in the Hamburger Bahnhof with Anna-Catharina Gebbers

 

A special exhibition of the Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.

Visitor in the Gemäldegalerie
© Staatliche Museen zu Berlin / Fabian Fröhlich
Exhibition Catalogue "Magical Soup"
© Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie
„Katharina Grosse. It Wasn’t Us“, Exhibition view Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart – Berlin, 2020 / Courtesy KÖNIG GALERIE, Berlin, London, Tokyo / Gagosian / Galerie nächst St. Stephan Rosemarie Schwarzwälder, Wien
© Katharina Grosse / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2020 / Foto: Jens Ziehe
Sandra Mujinga, Disruptive Pattern, filmstill, 2018
© the artist, Croy Nielsen, Vienna and The Approach, London
Das Herbstferienprogramm 2020 beginnt
© Staatliche Museen zu Berlin / Valerie Schmidt
Education and outreach for adults
© Staatliche Museen zu Berlin / Juliane Eirich
Sung Tieu
© Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie / Ronald Laube
Gabriele Knapstein in conversation with the artist Katharina Grosse
© Courtesy Katharina Grosse and VG Bild-Kunst Bonn, 2020
Isa Genzken with Wolfgang Tillmans, Science Fiction/be happy here and now, 2001, detail, exhibition view: moving is in every direction, Hamburger Bahnhof, 2017
© Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie, Hamburger Bahnhof, Donation of the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection / Photo: Thomas Bruns / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn
“Magical Soup” Exhibition View HHamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart 2020 / Nam June Paik, I Never Read Wittgentstein (I Never Understood Wittgenstein), 1997 / 2013 erworben durch die Freunde der Nationalgalerie © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie / Mathias Völzke
© Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie / Mathias Völzke
Special exhibition: "Magical Soup"
© Staatliche Museen zu Berlin
Nam June Paik, I Never Read Wittgenstein (I Never Understood Wittgenstein), 1997 © Nam June Paik Estate / Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie / Mathias Völzke
© Nam June Paik Estate / Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie / Mathias Völzke

Invalidenstraße 50 - 51
10557 Berlin

partially wheelchair accessible
Access to the Rieckhallen is currently not barrier-free. Please contact the information desk at the ticket office if necessary.

S+U-Bahn, Tram und Bus: Hauptbahnhof

Sun 11:00 - 18:00
Mon closed
Tue 10:00 - 18:00
Wed 10:00 - 18:00
Thu 10:00 - 20:00
Fri 10:00 - 18:00
Sat 11:00 - 18:00

Opening times on public holidays Opening Hours

Annual Ticket from 25,00 EUR
free time slot ticket required

Tel 030 - 266 42 42 42 (Mon - Fri, 9 am - 4 pm)
Questions | Bookings | Feedback

Related Links

Exhibition catalogue in the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin webshop

Museum and the City: “Magical Soup. Eine Reise in die Geschichte der Medienkunst” on the blog of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Exhibition YouTube playlist

FRIEDRICH CHRISTIAN FLICK collection